Until recently, I was convinced that anthropogenic (man made) greenhouse gases (mostly CO2) was the primary driver of climate change and that we needed to take CO2 very seriously including making responsible public policy to reduce its production.

How did I “know” that CO2 was causing global warming? Come on, how could I not know! Like me, you probably get most of your information from the popular media. So you can hardly be blamed for believing that the science surrounding climate  change is settled (i.e. the scientists are mostly in agreement) and that it’s all about carbon – as in man-made CO2. It’s been in the  news almost on a daily basis, on the cover of most leading magazines for the past several years, and has pervaded popular cultural with a growing sense of alarm.

Vice President Al Gore even won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for elevating the visibility and urgency of man-made global warming. Congress is attempting to movie forward with carbon cap-and-trade legislation. It’s gotta be real, right?

And then there are all those climate scientists. Hundreds of them. No, thousands! Who all contributed to, and/or endorsed, the findings of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the “IPCC”) which basically agreed with Al Gore.  And what about the Kyoto Treaty and all those governments from all over the planet that signed on to it?

I wish I could claim that I had some kind of special Einsteinian insight that allowed me to see past all of this “evidence” to some hidden nugget of contrarian truth. No, instead it was this uncomfortable feeling I got while chatting with a fellow engineer who was quite skeptical of the popular mantra of man-made climate change. I kept wondering why such an educated, informed and otherwise rational guy like him just didn’t  “get it” when it came to climate change.

I couldn’t leave it alone. So I decided to dig into the facts and learn for myself.  If you have internet access and a browser, the evidence is out there.  What I learned shocked me.

First, you  need time and patience to sort through a mountain of pseudo-science, fanaticism, and just plain crap. The bulk of all that falls into one of two camps – the rants and raves of either the zealous “believers” or  the rabid “deniers”. Either camp is too dogmatic for my taste and they smell like a combo of religion cultists and AM talk radio cretins.  If you get past most of that clutter a picture begins to emerge that bears little resemblance to what is dished out by the popular media.

What surprised me the most was the Vostok ice core data that goes back 100′s of thousands of years as shown plotted in the graph below. You’d be right if you concluded that this data shows a clear correlation between CO2 and temperature. But a closer analysis reveals (not discernible  in the graph) that the CO2 lags behind the temperature by an average of 800 years!  Temperatures do indeed appear to control carbon and not the other way around (perhaps through temperature driven solubility changes in sea water). And while it’s possible that carbon also influences temperature the data don’t show much evidence of that. As temperatures rise, on average it takes 800 years before carbon starts to move. The extraordinary thing is that this CO2 lag is well accepted by climatologists, yet virtually unknown outside these circles.

Ironically, Al Gore used this same data in his book/movie,  “An Inconvenient Truth”, to “prove” that CO2 was driving global warming. Conveniently, he left out the part about the 800 year CO2 lag. I don’t know why.

I was also surprised to learn that the number of climate skeptics is on the rise as data, assumptions, and climate models are being more carefully reconsidered.

“The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)”  – Wall Street Journal

What we really know for certain is that the earth, on average, has undergone a one-degree warming over recent decades (most of it before 1940) and that the climate has, and will continue to, change due to natural forces.  All else, is pure speculation and theory, much of it based upon extremely fallible computer modeling rather than actual empirical evidence.

Why are computer models of climate change fallible? You don’t have to look any further than modern weather forecasting  for a practical and familiar perspective. Meteorological models have gotten decent at predicting weather out a few days, sometimes even out 7-10 days. Even so, they sometimes get it wrong. Would you trust a weather forecast 2 weeks out,  a month, a year?

Now step back and imagine a mathematical model for the entire globe based almost entirely on first principal physics equations (but little or no hard empirical data) that tries to simulate something way more complex than next week’s weather and  instead tries to capture the complex physical and chemical interactions of the oceans, land, ice, air, sun, clouds, cosmic rays etc. out over months and even years. Interactions that scientists readily admit are not yet fully understood – hence they can’t be modeled accurately!

Now take the many versions of these computer models (22 +) and their various resulting projections, get everyone in a room and vote on the your favorite, call that a scientific consensus (which the lay community and the media interpret as proven fact), and subsequently declare a global emergency requiring a gigantic tax on CO2 emissions! That may qualify as a good working definition of collective global madness but it is not how good science is done.

“At the heart of scientific thinking has to be a strong desire not to fool yourself, coupled by an understanding of how to actually put that desire into practice. Complex systems are an important and relevant topic, but they’ve been so difficult to tackle because they are messy and hard to study. It’s difficult to find the right simplifying assumptions, and to make sure that you’ve considered all of the important factors that go into the behavior of the system. It’s so easy to be wrong.

And so it’s sad to see this emerging scientific culture that bizarrely believes that if you can produce a model that fits the data that inspired you to build the model, you’ve actually shown that your model accurately captures the system. This culture floods the scientific literature with zero-impact papers, dazzles the computationally naïve, captures a lot of air time in the news.”  -  Michael White

What appears to be happening here is a most unfortunate confluence of science, politics, media hype, environmental activism and the emergence of something that more closely resembles a green religion.

Given the present political climate where something as tangible and familiar as health care can barely get a fair hearing, a densely complex topic  like climate change doesn’t stand a chance; especially when it gets wrapped in an alarmist blanket of doom and gloom that the media can’t help but throw some more fuel on and light another match…..over and over again.

Maybe I’m not as wise as I’d like to think I am but I’ve definitely become a climate change skeptic (regarding CO2) as a result of my inquiry into the science surrounding the climate change debate. A debate that is obviously far from settled and one which it witnessing significant defections by leading scientists into the skeptics camp.

What we should worry about far more than global warming (which is going to happen, or not, no matter what we do) is the havoc that a carbon tax could inflict on our economy as rational scientific (and public) debate gets sacrificed on the alter of environmental extremism.

Meanwhile, as we obsess ever more about CO2 there is little doubt we’re taking our eye off the ball of both real pollution (NOx, SO2, Mercury, et. al. ) and the far more real national security threat of our energy supply.

This whole debacle reminds me of a quote by Bertrand Russell who said….“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

I strongly encourage the reader to look into this further. Neither a believer nor a denier be. Get the facts and let them fall where they may.

In closing, I believe the following is a fair summary of 10 popular myths surrounding global warming as provided by CO2Science.org. I also refer you to a list of informative websites which can be found on my “Links” page. I  will be adding to this list over the coming days and weeks as I learn more.

MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8Cover the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas (“heat islands”), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas (“land use effects”).

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.

MYTH 2: The “hockey stick” graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17^th Century the “average global temperature” has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

The “hockey stick”, a poster boy of both the UN’s IPCC and Canada’s Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.

MYTH 3:  Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO₂ content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO₂ is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO₂ levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth’s oceans expel more CO₂ as a result.

MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3 % of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapor and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO₂, CH₄, Ozone and N₂O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO₂ constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as “greenhouse agents” than water vapor and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 60% of the “Greenhouse effect”.

Those attributing climate change to CO₂ rarely mention this important fact.

MYTH 5:  Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.

FACT: Computer models can be made to “verify” anything by changing some of the 5 million input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used.. They do not “prove” anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.

MYTH 6:  The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.

FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1)     “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute  the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2)     “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”

To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming.

MYTH 7:  CO2 is a pollutant.

FACT: This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is.  CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included  CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it.

MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.

FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale.  Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.

MYTH 9:  Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.

FACT: Glaciers have been  receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier’s health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.

MYTH 10:  The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.

FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica.

Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.

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Tags: carbon, climate change, climate debate, climate science, CO2, IPCC